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Barbie Gets to be a Computer Engineer
- tiffani 17y agoI never willingly played with Barbies as a kid (I sold my last 6 at a yard sale my mom had when I was like 8 or 9), but I do believe I'll be buying this one--even if she just stays in the box.
- epochwolf 17y agoNon-standard navigation... To scroll you have to click the up/down arrows in the bottom right.
- Josh_e 17y agoWhen I was a kid my dad didn't let me play with Dolls. He ended up getting rid of all of my sister's Barbies so I would play with other toys instead. Ever since I never play with or thought about buying a Barbie until now. I will for sure be getting this one.
- olliesaunders 17y agoHe didn't want to reinforce gender stereotypes?
- starnix17 17y agoDoes anyone else find the crazy amount of copyright symbols in that press release funny?
- jff 17y agoAs a computer engineer, I might have to buy one and stash it away for any future daughters. However, we don't wear "binary code patterned t-shirts". I guess maybe conference shirts aren't as recognizably geeky.
- ryanelkins 17y agoYeah, I thought it was a bit silly myself, but I realize it's a difficult thing to design for - we don't really have any instantly recognizable uniform they could use. I'm not sure what I could come up with that someone could guess what she is supposed to be just by looking at her and not be somewhat ridiculous.
- scdlbx 17y agoKhaki cargo pants and a black t-shirt with "Got Root?" written on it.
- akadien 17y agoI was hoping for a FreeBSD daemon tshirt, but "Got Root" would work, too.
- rapind 17y agoOr Rush
- jff 17y agoMaybe the cargo pants. As for Thinkgeek t-shirts, they have sorta fallen from favor here in the engineering department--to start with, we've observed that the approach of such a shirt frequently proceeds the arrival of generally unpleasant body odors. They're still pretty big (XXXL in some cases) in the CS dept.
- jcl 17y agoOh? http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/unisex/generic/6c49/ http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/unisex/generic/6c49...
- ugh 17y agoSee http://www.barbiemedia.com/admin/uploads/ComputerEngineerBarbie.pdf http://www.barbiemedia.com/admin/uploads/ComputerEngineerBar... [PDF] for a photo.
- DannoHung 17y agoNot that I could come up with anything better, but is anyone else a little disappointed in what they've come up with? We need better accessorization to appeal to little girls, I guess. Couldn't they have at least put some code on her laptop instead of 0's and 1's?
- squidbot 17y agoAgreed! Maybe we could lobby them to replace it with a DeCSS snippet.Or just be subversive and have some stickers printed up and leave them on shelves next to the Barbies.
- akadien 17y agoAt least, but the code in a terminal window, with a another window showing a bit torrent client or something.
- AndrewHampton 17y agoI thought the most interesting part about this was the binary code on the computer she's holding spells out "BarBie" repeatedly.
- mjg 17y agoperl -e 'print map(pack("B*", $_), qw(01000010 01100001 01110010 01100010 01101001 01100101)), "\n"'
- rbanffy 17y agoBluetooth headset?! Come on!
- zackattack 17y agoMight as well call it Taxicab Barbie
- rodyancy 17y agoShe's making deals and writing binary.
- Tichy 17y agoAnd she still has a wristwatch.
- red888 17y agoYeah looks less like an engineer and more like a generic technophile, which I guess is still a step in the right direction?
- rbanffy 17y agoNo way. - Her notebook should never be pink - There should be some stickers on the notebook stating her favourite OS and programming language - And mocking all others - The notebook should not run Windows. Neither OSX nor Linux. It should run some experimental OS she is busy writing - Her t-shirt should be from Think Geek. - Better: her t-shirt should have a haiku written in Haskell
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- Frazzydee 17y ago"Both News Anchor Barbie® and Computer Engineer Barbie® are currently available for pre-order exclusively at www.MattelShop.com." Could anybody actually find it on their site?
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- johnswamps 17y agoNope, I couldn't either
- jamesk2 17y agoBarbie used to think that "Math is hard," now she's a master of recursion and lambdas.
- rit 17y agoMonads are hard, let's go shopping!
- timr 17y agoIt's only a matter of time until Barbie loses her job to a Chinese-made equivalent.
- jjs 17y agoAre you sure she's not already made in China?
- radicalmatt 17y ago"To create an authentic look, Barbie® designers worked closely with the Society of Women Engineers and the National Academy of Engineering to develop the wardrobe and accessories for Computer Engineer Barbie®. Wearing a binary code patterned tee and equipped with all the latest gadgets including a smart phone, Bluetooth headset, and laptop travel bag, Computer Engineer Barbie® is geek chic." A swing, and a miss.
- matrix 17y agoA wild off-balance swing and a stumbling miss, I agree. Of course, real-life business casual isn't going to work ("Hey, its J.Crew Barbie!") but they could have gone for: - An edgy all-black mod look ala The Matrix. - Slim-fitting jeans, and fitted t-shirt with 8-bit graphics motif; accessorized with a super-slick looking laptop running Gentoo. - A cute Unix hippy look, with BSD or Linux t-shirt, and a bus analyzer/logic analyzer as the accessory.
- Groxx 17y ago- An edgy all-black mod look ala The Matrix. haha, hopefully you're not referring to Trinity in that. Though I'd love to see Ken decked out like Neo when they stormed the building, guns and all.
- conesus 17y agoOy, Computer Engineer Barbie gets a bluetooth headset and bad taste in clothing. Shouldn't she be selling the industry, not mocking it?
- ricardo_sdl 17y agoI couldn't look at the site, it hurt my eyes.
- cmelbye 17y agoDon't worry, I've heard a rumor that her next profession is a web designer.
- Timothee 17y agoThat should come in handy: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
- sliverstorm 17y agoI read it, turned away, and found my eyes were honest to god burning. (Not flames, just burning pain...)
- dugmartin 17y agoAs a father of two daughters I'm both intrigued and repelled by this.
- olliesaunders 17y agoWhy repelled?
- jcmhn 17y agoPink explosion.
- jcl 17y agoFor the first time ever, Barbie® asked the world to help her select her next career. Actually, Barbie® asked the internet. And it chose a computer career, which is about as surprising as moot winning the Time 100 poll. (Edit: See the original Reddit thread for the call to action as well as various vote stuffing attempts. Apparently, this poll was more resistant than the Time one. http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/aobsa/vote_for_barbie_to_be_a_computer_engineer/ http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/aobsa/vote_for_... )
- moron4hire 17y agoWhen I saw the headset on the doll, I immediately jumped to thinking it was some kind of "tech support Barbie", i.e. a demeaning job, not requiring a degree, barely above janitor at most IT firms, often staffed by people who found out they couldn't hack it in higher education.
- Groxx 17y agoAre those binary semaphores, or are you just happy to see me? I wonder what this implies for "tail-end recursion" o_ô
- docgnome 17y agoI think this is my favorite thread of all time.